J. Grant Brittain is a pioneer. Very few individuals have had the impact on an international community in the same way that Brittain has over the years. Starting his career in the late 70's with a borrowed camera, he managed to get several of his shots published in Thrasher magazine in the early 80's. While still working at the newly opened Del Mar Skate Ranch, Brittain became involved with an underground newsletter, which eventually turned into the largest skateboard publication in the world - Transworld Magazine.
After a long career building Transworld from the ground up, Brittain set his sights on launching his own magazine, which is simply known as "The Skateboard Mag." His list of subjects is staggering - Christain Hosoi, Andy MacDonald, Tony Hawk, Bob Burnquist, and Lance Mountain to name a few. We sat down with Brittain to talk about his experience with the skateboarding community, his career, and his passion for photography. Check out the conversation below and

Sous le ciel de Paris - literally translated to "under the sky of Paris" - is a short firm by director NEELS CASTILLON who is a talented young artist based out of Paris. In this short film, Castillon takes an alternative approach to shooting a typical day skateboarding in the French capital. Showing fragmented scenes in all black and white, Castillon takes us from the streets of Paris to the crowded seats of the Metropolitan allowing us to relive scenes of a day that has since passed. To a certain extent, it almost feels as if the filmmaker is taking his own recollections of the day and deliberately displaying them to his audience in a way that mirrors how the memories are floating around in his own brain - disjointed, time agnostic and distant.
Combine the creative approach with an amazing sound production and you have the recipe for a memorable video.
Directed and designed: Neels Castillon
Skateboarders: Arthur Turpin, Andrea Giallonardo, Djessy Home
Music...

The progression of popular culture throughout the years, from Beatlemania in the 1960's to the infamous on-stage twerking of Miley Cyrus, has created and left behind cultural icons that represent something wholly different from the individual. Steve Jobs, Barack Obama and Batman represent concepts that have become part of our collective conversation, which connects us as a society and pushes our mental capacity for understanding each other. Hope, rebellion, change - these ideas have manifested themselves in different personas both past and present, taking different shades of meaning throughout the years.
Popular culture is tangible.
It is this tangibility that provides a palate for Brooklyn-based artist TECHNODROME1 a platform to express his own experiences with icons in popular culture. "It's all pop culture inspired," says TECHNODROME1 when asked about the inspiration for his work, "new and old, we are saturated in it, there's no reason other than I like the subjects I draw."
Recently, TECHNODROME1 and his partner, Jason Blanck, have collaborated to bring the artist's...

Stuttgart is the capital city of the state Baden-Württemberg in Southern Germany. Its densely populated city center has served as an incubator for a lively skateboarding scene and an intensely unique street culture. Skater's Atlas, an online skateboard magazine that brings readers to cities around the world, recently did a spotlight on the city, highlighting some of the killer spots, talented skaters, gifted artists and vibrant night life scene that Stuttgart has to offer. (Check out the spotlight they featured on Stuttgart artist Daniel Geiger above)
While filming for the issue, photographers from the magazine shot a collection of 35mm photos that depict what life is like for a skateboarder in Stuttgart. The first thing you notice when flipping through the photos is the emphasis on intimate street scenes - not on action shots.
In similar fashion to how many food shows use cuisine as a platform for understanding culture, the crew at Skater's Atlas is using skateboarding as a platform for encapsulating and...

Spain's Nomad Skateboards produced a series of limited edition cruisers that were simply dubbed "VERY OLD SCHOOL." To accompany the release the shop released a really creative campaign that evoked old forms of transportation in an old world. Part of the campaign was a short clip shot in all black and white, with skaters dressed in classy old world attire shredding on the VERY OLD SCHOOl cruisers.
While the cruisers are no longer available, what's left is one of the more creative skateboard campaigns that has come out in a long while. Disregarding the commercial interests that probably fueled the production of this video, transplanting skateboarders into the distant past is one hell of an interesting visual when executed the right way.
Check out the print ads below and the short clip above.
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Ordos is a hidden paradise tucked away in mainland China, and has become what many have called a "Ghost City." Sprawling city space that is something that came out of a dream, placed against a backdrop of unique architectural elements and a population that is nowhere near as dense as any major Chinese city. Naturally, skateboarders would find this sort of destination highly attractive, and lately many have gone to Ordos to document what is there to discover. What has come out of this pilgrimage is a handful of pioneers who have documented a terrain that few people will ever get to see, especially through the creative lens of skateboarding.
One of those pioneers is Kevin Metallier, a French photographer who recently set out with many skaters who have thoroughly explored the City to capture the beauty and mystery of Ordos. What he got on film was a mixture of amazing action shots, street life, and beautiful landscape that tells a...

The Driftwood Collective is a group of friends based out of Portugal who are entwined in the surfing culture. In their idle hours between swells they aim to contribute to what they term an "alternative surfing culture" in Europe. What exactly does that mean? To be perfectly forthcoming - we haven't quite deciphered their life philosophy quite yet, but through all of their interesting quips and nebulous thoughts that scatter their several videos on their Vimeo page, there was a statement that really caught our eye:
"A main task of our times is to create a sort of poetry able to deal with the outcasts of our own civilization, a kind of new spirituality that does not retreat into the idealization of an untouched nature but is willing to accept all the waste we produce and create some kind of aesthetic experience with it."
Or to put in everyday English, what we are all meant to do is to create beauty of...

Andy Weiss started skateboarding when he was 12 years old, getting his first board from his grandma. That skateboard is what got him "through living in a really small town, especially through those teenage years." When he graduated high school Weiss moved to Ft. Collins, where he and a friend opened up a skate shop that they operated for 15 years. "I never really thought of myself as a retailer," Weiss recalls through an interview, but rather saw himself as a member of a community that his shop supported.
That subtle distinction is what encouraged Weiss to start a nonprofit skateboarding organization called Launch.
Nowadays skateboarding is used as a tool for people to push the agenda on several things - commerce, art work, photography, and countless other pursuits - but the aim of Launch is to make skateboarding the agenda itself. Weiss seeks to give kids the same exposure and experience that he had as a child, incubating the creative...

Illegal. One word that is inseparable from the culture of skateboarding. The sport itself represents an independent outlet for physical activity that shies away from the conventions of established sports. The environment that modern street skating takes place are the cities that many civic leaders try to protect by creating laws that prohibit skateboarders from skating public terrain. A skateboarding trick that is pulled off in the streets happens in a window of time that is never more than a handful of minutes - just short enough to avoid being kicked off a property before a security guard threatens to call the police.
A skater, in every aspect, is someone who is defying authority.
However, that line is getting blurred as the sport becomes increasingly commercialized. Mass skate photography often captures an absurdly hard trick in a spot that would only be open to a crew with a permit. In a sense, mass skate photography is often staged. While the trick itself...

Matt Alberts is a photographer that was born in Philadelphia in the time when Love Park was the center of the skateboarding universe. His connection to the sport has stayed with him throughout his life, and remains a large influence on the photography that he pursues as a career today. Naturally, his affinity for skateboarding has translated into some pretty ambitious projects over the years. Much of his work has centered on capturing the essence of street skateboarding in the East Coast Skate Mecca's of New York City and Philadelphia, where he has not only captured beautiful action shots, but also encapsulated a bit of the street "feel" that you get when cruising around the urban environment of each city.
His current project - "The Lifers Project" - is much more ambitious in scale, and deliberate in purpose. His subject is what he calls a "Lifer," or in other words someone who is so enamored with skateboarding, they have dedicated their...

Living in New York City, it's hard to appreciate just how gnarly longboarding can actually be. With mild hills and a predictable urban landscape that is cut by numbered streets and avenues, the sport that some may see as an interesting hobby for some can actually be a ridiculously intense sport for another. Bay area skateboarder and longboarder Liam Morgan recently created a video that shows a raw run down a huge hill in the Los Angeles area.
The first thing you'll notice about this run is speed. The speed at which Morgan is moving is so intense that if anyone tried this on a skateboard, they would get the speed wobbles and take a fatal dive into the concrete within a few turns. When asked if he's taken any serious slams before he simply replies "Nothing too major. I've been hit by cars, smashed into guardrails, and left a fair amount of my skin on the road."
Whether or not you...

Christoph Dyckmans is a student studying industrial engineering, who fashions himself something of a shoe nerd. Ever since he began skateboarding in middle school, Christoph and his brother Clemens Dyckmans felt that the reviews they read in the skateboard magazines or online weren't cutting it. The reviews resembled product endorsements more than actual critiques of the shoe quality, Clemens felt that he could do better. Drawing inspiration from an online website that provided a very detailed, technical analysis of basketball shoes, Clemens sought to provide skaters the same level of detail and rigor to the products that were hitting the skateboard market.
The challenge was funding this side-passion of his without buy-in from the industry. After all, it would only make sense that brands would be cautious of a passionate shoe fanatic trying to critique and review their new products. "He had to figure everything our step by step," writes Christoph. Clemens literally wrote his articles in English (his second language),...

Michael Sieben is a designer out of Austin, TX., whose work has been exhibited and reviewed worldwide as well as featured in numerous illustration anthologies. He has worked with an impressive list of clients - Addidas, Harper Design, MTV, Nickelodeon, Toy Machine Skateboards, Juxtapoz Magazine, VICE Magazine, and Volcom - to name a few. His illustrations and designs demonstrate a style that has two major influences: skateboard graphic illustration of the '80s mixed with the aesthetic of children's book illustration from the '70s. "I was blown away by all of the skate graphics the first time I picked up a skateboard," writes Sieben "...I was really interested in drawing, and seeing the stuff that VCJ, Jim Phillips, and Pushead were drawing at the time - I was blown away."
Recently, Sieben was approached by Harper Design (an imprint of Harper Collins Publishing) to illustrate and publish a contemporary version of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz with a refreshed look and feel. What has...

Mike Belleme has been skating since he was 12 years old. Enamored by the subculture, Belleme sought to capture the essence of street skating as he saw it through his own experiences. Too often, the skateboarding subculture if gone largely unnoticed by those who are outside looking in. That miscommunication can largely be attributed to the mainstream skateboarding media that surrounds the literal sport and stretches over the nuances of what it actually means to be part of a large and diverse street skating community.
"I don't think your average skate action shot has a lot to say about what it means to be a skater," says Belleme. Instead of focusing on typical action shots, the skater gone photographer tries to capture different themes in his images that, when viewed together, demonstrates the confluence of factors that push individuals around the world to dedicate themselves to a subculture that is (mostly) not very lucrative and often viewed by others as an...

"We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson the 19th century champion of individualism. Central to Emerson's doctrine was the "infinitude of the private man," or put in other words the capability of man to achieve the infinite - the ability to transcend.
Inspired by this ethos, filmmaker Ian Durkin tells the story of a group of friends traveling the American Northeast skating all different kinds of surfaces. From the backwoods, to old dilapidated concrete structures and to typical refined surfaces, the group seeks new places to skate while also taking the time to take in the scenery and their company.
But what truly makes this film able to communicate a theme that many of us can relate is that the skateboarding serves as a platform for the company to escape the confines of what people think is possible. In the most literal application of this theme, the film...

Fabiano Rodrigues takes us on a tour of São Paulo in this portfolio of skate photography. Allowing the architecture of the city to share the center stage with his skateboarding, Fabiano beautifully depicts the urban landscape, and the relationship that is created between the two. Presented in a monochromatic filter, the skateboarder turned photographer further blurs the line between city and skater, making himself anonymous throughout the portfolio. Take a look closer and you'll notice that in each of these photos, he's holding a remote control. All of the photos in this series were taken with a hasselblad camera as the photographer explores "the history and repertoire of skateboarding movements, particularly its relationship with the city, its architecture and urban furniture."

Matt Box is a graphic designer based out of the UK. Fresh out of graduate school, this talented young designer has used two of the most stylish skateboarders in history as subjects of his recent project "Acid Drops." The idea is simple, and readily apparent - capture the unique style of influential skaters. Those who have seen skate videos from Dylan Rieder or Jason Dill, can probably immediately recognize the movements captured in these videos at first glance - even though the frame for each skate scene is obscured to the skater and the immediate contact that the board is making with the obstacles. And while the unmistakable style of Dylan and Dill help tell the story in these videos - Matt is still able to use their body movements as tools in his own expression. Influential style creating original style - what a concept.
Check out more of Matt's videos here and support this amazing young artist....

The Brewster-Douglass projects stand in the Detroit skyline as a metaphor for the contracting metropolis. Built between 1935 and 1955, the development first broke ground when first lady Eleanor Roosevelt broke ground in 1935 for the 701-unit development. Originally called the Frederick Douglass Homes, they were at once the largest residential housing project owned by the city of Detroit. The complex was home to a rolodex of famous figures from Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, Florence Ballard, Lily Tomlin, Loni Love and Etterlene DeBarge. But now, like the city it sits in, the projects are a shade of what they used to be. Abandoned, depleted and a dreary reminder of how the economic dream that was once Detroit has been turned into a financial nightmare with few resolutions.
On June 21, 2013 a cop showed up to a scene at the Brewster-Douglass projects that from the outside probably seemed like a situation that was getting out of control. Nearly 200 skateboarders had...

Dani Bautista is a young filmmaker based in Cebu, who discovered his talent with a camera through skateboarding. Growing up in Hong Kong and being involved with the tight-knit skate scene there, Dani started filming his friends with a camcorder that came with a DVD player his Dad bought. Getting more involved with skating led Dani to get a job at the world famous 8Five2 skateshop, where he started helping them with their sales. Over time, as Dani became more experienced with a camera, 8Five2 gave him the opportunity to begin filming for their team. Now in film school, Dani is branching out into more diverse filmmaking opportunities. He recently made a short clip called "Cruisin' in Hong Kong" that got a lot of attention from people around the world.
Dani was kind enough to sit down with us and chat about his experience behind a camera and how skateboarding opened the doors to his career.
Can you tell us a...

Adam Abada and his good friend Zach are pure-bred east coast skaters who recently took off on a "road trip" with nothing but the clothes on their back and their skateboards. In an attempt to feel reconnected to the region they grew up - its nuances and its people - the pair took off from Boston to New York. Relying on a network of friends and strangers along the path, Adam and Zach skated from town to town filming everything they saw and did throughout their journey. The pair shot upwards of 30 hours of film, slept on top of coffee shops, partied with felons and narrowly avoided arrest in their 225 mile odyssey.
What has resulted is a documentary exhibiting their travels, the places they saw and the people they met.
Adam Abada sat down and and chatted with us about the trip and some of the things he saw - check out the documentary and visit their site...

With all the gripes about urban expansion and the associated decline in environmental preservation, there seems to be one platform that is thriving from the explosion in modern development: skateboarding. Have you ever heard of a town called Ordos? It's tucked away in Inner Mongolia, or as others may call it Northern China with a population around 2M. Architecturally light but a wonderland for those who skate, this landscape is legitimately a place that many skateboarders can only dream of. Few security guards, newly minted urban terrain and scenery that makes even a common kick flip make you squirm in your seat with excitement.
Filmed by one of our favorites, Charles Lanceplaine, the filmmaker exhibits a fascinating environment that few have seen explored, well alone skated, before. If you havent't checked out Charles' first documentary regarding the skate scene in modern Shanghai, we beg you please check it out, it's amazing. Also if you haven't seen more of Charles' work...

Riding through the streets on a skateboard makes you see and feel the city differently. Weaving in and out of traffic, hopping on and off curbs and taking in the sights all work together to make you feel like an integrated part of the city, inseparable from the life pulsing through the busy streets. Needless to say, experiencing the city in this context inevitably changes your experience of the urban environment. Interactivity and the possibility of creative expression become an ingrained part of individual perception shifting the way you look at everything from the rails you chain your bikes and the small cracks in the sidewalks that could potentially throw you off your board.
This perceptual shift creates a space where a different kind of conversation and cultural experience can be shared among a certain subset of individuals. This space opens a forum to discuss the urban environment in a new and interesting way. Charles Lanceplaine created a video documenting this urban...

Young filmmaker Danny Bautista takes us on a tour of Hong Kong in this awesome short video that captures what it's like to cruise around with your buddies in a highly urbanized environment. Of course, there's some pretty sick skating but what really hit home in this video was Danny's ability to capture the authenticity of what the title of his short film suggests. All of the shots were captured essentially in motion and includes scenes of the featured skateboarders Chris Bradley, Chun Chai, Ah Wai, Ah Ngau and Piet Guilfoyle just having a damn good time. It's nice to see a different kind of video like this come out that focuses more on the feel of skateboarding rather than the skill - it really makes you appreciate the less tangible aspects of skating that make it so much fun.
Check out Danny's vimeo page here, where you can find this video and more of his awesome work....

A pair of ragged jeans, a short-sleeve T-shirt, a pair of headphones tucked into the shirt feeding out of the collar into the ears, and possibly a beanie on the head even though the weather isn't all too chilly. These are probably all things that people think of today when they imagine skateboarders. However, this archetype didn't always exist and in fact before skating was heavily adopted by a very specific segment of the population, there was quite a popular craze around the sport. Detached from all the modern associations of street culture and delinquency, skateboarding actually can seem quite natural to almost any group of individuals.
In the 1960's, Bill Eppridge shot a series of photos for LIFE magazine, which depict both kids and adults skateboarding around New York before there were any preloaded associations attached with the sport. "The most exhilarating and dangerous joyride this side of the hot rod," the magazine opined in 1965, "A two-foot piece of...

Many know the feeling - unwrapping a new board, screwing in your already worn down trucks, carefully applying the grip tape to the top of the deck so that there aren't any air bubbles, and then taking the first push on your newly assembled skateboard. You glide around feeling out the contours of the board, bend up and down to get the feeling of the deck, and shuffle your feet around to get your body acquainted with your new ride. But then it happens. You hesitate to pop a trick in fear that you're going to deface the beautiful design that attracted your eyes to the deck in the first place. Over time, everyone gets over that first feeling of caution and skates. They skate until the tail and nose are worn down to the point you can visibly see all three layers of wood worn to a pulp, and the graphics etched into an amorphous blob of wax, ink,...

In 1938, rather than see the city of Changsha fall into the hands of Japanese forces, Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek literally burned the city to the ground. Changsha, now a city of six million, is what Rian Dundon has titled a "City on FIre." The sprawling metropolis is an exemplification of a contemporary China torn between its traditional roots and the alluring attraction of modernity.
Rian Dundon, an American photographer, spent six years in the city photographing his journey in gritty black and white photographs in an attempt to document both the city and the people who often get left out of the discussion in the story of China's economic development. The result is a fascinating piece of work that depicts street life in modern China and the everyday activities of those that live in the modern economic miracle that is China. Take a look at some of his photos below and checkout the conversation we had with Rian about...

SKATE UPTON, inspired by the infamous SKATE MOSS, tacks on to the hot model + skateboards concept with mockup decks plastered with Kate Upton's image. Check out the decks below and head over to the blog to see more.
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Skateboarding is one of the earliest inclinations that most of us have for personal expression. As a channel for creativity, skateboarding has taught countless generations of kids to take what already exists in the cloud of shared skateboarding tricks and methods, and make it their own. The beauty lies not in the perfection of each skater's style, but the imperfections that constitute an individual's mode of expression. This, in a nutshell, is what countless skaters have taken from the sport into their own lives. Whether or not many of us still ride a skateboard, the ability and desire that skateboarding gives kids to creatively express their individual dispositions is a valuable gift that is often taken for granted.
The imperfection that arises is a direct result of the individual constraint that prevents a 'perfect' style. While the mass media depicts skateboarding as a network of professionals who throw insane tricks down a...

A really cool video coming from the Czech Republic featuring a tron-like skater who is cruising through a seemingly barren urban landscape. While the production is spectacular, you have to check out the video that shows the making of the film, it's almost as cool as the production itself. Head over to SAMADHI PRODUCTIONS' vimeo page and give them some love. Enjoy.
Making Of FIREFLY from samadhi production on Vimeo....

FAT THUMB PUBLISHING is an upstart publishing company focused on creating media that is influenced by their skateboarding roots. 'Creative destruction,' as Kevin Sullivan describes, is an ethos that skaters everywhere should maintain in whatever endeavor they find themselves. Fat Thumb is trying to breathe life into that mentality through their efforts.
"Better If Your Don't Come Back" is the first title from their young operation. Author Joseph DeMough tells a story of two skaters who have to transition from skating all day to dealing with some serious life issues - kids, jobs, and not having enough time in the day. Through the author's realistic voice, you get the sense that in some way the tale mirrors aspects of DeMough's own life, however, the characters themselves have been abstracted to the point where any skater can easily identify with what unfolds in the pages. Reading through the novel, it's this abstraction that had so many of the situations in the book...

Tommy Carrol, born with cancer of the retinas, has made a splash online after Amsterdam-based safety organization VeiligheidNL made Tommy the subject of their "Be Brave. Be Safe." campaign. He is an avid skateboarder and a sophomore at Northwestern University, and has created such a sensation online, skateboard legend Tony Hawk sought out Carrol to skate with him after hearing Tommy's story.
"I think what's really funny about skateboarding is when you get something new and kind of scary, when you finally land that scary thing and you feel that tension release, that's one of the better feelings," he says, explaining "it's one of the biggest adrenaline rushes you'll ever experience."
Watch the "Be Brave" video above and let us know what you think about Tommy and his story....

An awesome short video from Tilman Singer made from pictures of skaters in magazines and videos. The project took Singer three months to complete and the fruits of his labor are clearly seen in this short, but incredible piece of work.
Checkout this brief interview via Caughtinthecrossfire.com:
So what inspired you to piece this web flick together?
Well, these days I do not skate as frequently as I want to anymore but nevertheless skateboarding has always interested and inspired me and it is a great way to prevent yourself from growing up. You could say that this is my first animation or maybe my first video art production and I would love to be able to carve out a living from this type of work and that’s for this reason that inspired me to put this together.
How long did it take to complete?
I worked on it over a three month period mostly at night but I think if I had gone about...

Rodney Mullen has undoubtedly crafted modern street skateboarding, creating most of the tricks that have become common vernacular to individuals in and outside of skateboarding. Buy beyond that, the "Godfather" has inspired and enabled countless generations of skaters to pursue what they truly love. In this exuberant talk, Mullen speaks about his career in skateboarding and how the unique environments in which he was forced to skate drove the creation of new tricks and a new brand of skateboarding.
Innovation, it seems, comes in all forms - even in skateboarding....

Andrew Norton who is a "multimedia storyteller" has an incredible series profiling some of the biggest photographers in skateboarding, learning about their travels and their careers. In this episode, Norton profiles Johnathan Mehring who is an award winning photographer who has traveled to over 30 different countries for magazines including Rolling Stone, Spin, Skateboarder, Thrasher, Monster Children, Slap and Kingpin. In this video Norton talks to Mehring about his travels and some of his favorite memories from being on the road.
To check out the rest of the Photographer Series check out Norton's website here....

Talk about a dream home. Pierre Andre Senizergues, who owns Sole Technology (Etnies being one of their subsidiaries), has hired Francois Perrin from Air Architecture (LA) to build him a home that most can only dream of having.
As a former world champion and now a highly successful entrepreneur Pierre can enjoy the fruits of his labor with what he is calling the "PAS" house, taking on the alias of his initials. While some might say Pierre is going a little overboard with this ode to the sport, it definitely attests to his creativity and love for skateboarding.
Check out the video below which explains the process behind designing the house and be sure to check out AIR ARCHITECTURE'S website to see more of their work.
etnies PAS House for Public Domaine La Gaite Lyrique from etnies on Vimeo.

Jeff Gaudinet, a graphic designer with a masters degree in marketing, is the founder of "Atelier Independent" and has been a freelance graphic designer and art director for the past few years. While talking about skateboarding and Kate Moss with a friend (admittedly weird subjects to be discussing simultaneously), Gaudinet accidentally used the term "Skate Moss" and the idea took form from there. While Jeff claims that the platform he has created in SKATE MOSS is utterly "useless/pointless," we think it's a pretty cool idea that has taken flight with various designers submitting their take on the concept.
Take a look below at some of the work that has come from Gaudinet's concept, and be sure to check out his site for countless mockups in the site's archive, it's definitely worth a look.
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Koo Jeong A, in partnership with L'ESCAUT ARCHITECTURES, has recently finished a project titled "Otro," which is a skatepark in France that glows in the dark. Throughout the life of the project the team collaborated with structural engineers, skateboarders, and contractors to come up with a structure that would solve a problem that many skaters face - lighting up a night session. While this problem is normally tackled with massive overhead lights, the team took a different route and coated the surface of the park with luminescent material that lights up when the surroundings get dark.
The product is a beautifully crafted skatepark that looks like someone's fantasy at night time. Just one look at the structure placed against the backdrop of the woods, makes you want to give unlimited props to the art direction on this one. Just goes to show what can be possible when different minds come together to solve a practical problem.

HAROSHI is a Japanese artist who makes sculptures out of recycled skateboards. His art pieces focus on bringing together disparate pieces, where each element whether cut out in different shapes or kept in their original form, are connected in different styles, and shaven into the form of the final art piece. With such an approach, Haroshi very clearly has an intimate understanding of skateboards, both on a cultural and physical level. For anyone that knows his work and has seen it in person, you just need to take one glance at a piece and realize how much work and skill went into each construction. Yes recycled skateboards are a huge trend nowadays with many people moving in, creating skateboard glasses, jewelry and much more, but Haroshi's work is so unique that when you see something he's made you automatically know who is the one who constructed it.
"They're his communication tool with both his self, and the outside world," says his...

MAN YAU, a designer based out of Helseinki, Finland created a really awesome video titled "Porcelain Decks,"combining a variety of influences in her life including traditional porcelain casting, urban skateboarding culture, and 'art farting.'
She studies ceramics and glass design in Aalto University (ARTS), and currently works in the field of Art and Design. Some of her other projects include an interesting piece titled TOYSTORY which speaks to the affect that different points of view can have on the perception of the world in front of us. Particularly, Toystory examines the purity of a child's mind compared to that of an adult. Several of her pieces have appeared in galleries such as Gallery Airi and Gallery Koln. Man also does freelance work for CTRL which is a skateboarding/street culture inspired shop based out of Finland, and SEVEN INCH SKATEBOARDS.
Man took the time to sit down with us and talk to us about 'Porcelain Skateboards,' life in Finland, and a future project down the road:
Can...

World famous Steve Berra joins Mexican skaters Jesus Gonzales, Eder Martinez, Mario Saenz, Angel Santiago, and American Luis Tolentino for this short film that was made for Burn Energy Drink and shot in location at Mexico City.
Credits
Directed by Garth Davis
Music written, produced and performed by Django Django...

Erik Binggeser is a designer based out of Austin who has his hands involved with various projects including Team Beard, DreamIt Ventures, and Underground Skateboards among others. Additionally, Erik produces amazing works in his spare time - one of those projects "Fork In The Road" is a pixelated image of Luke Skywalker (seen Below) that caught our attention as it was being passed around online through various blogs. We sat down with Erik and spoke with him about his day to day, "Fork in the Road," and how skateboarding has played an intricate role in his life.
Tell us a little bit about yourself
Grew up in Michigan, about an hour north of Detroit. Moved to Savannah, GA for art school. Got a BFA in graphic design and then moved to Austin, TX in late December 2012. Most days are spent working at my internship where I do various design work for...